Case study: The Graal Spike Thrower

History

In some ways, the Graal shotgun – under a liberal application of the definition of a 'shotgun' – is a significantly older weapon than even the Kishock. With origins that supposedly pre-date the nuclear holocaust of Tuchanka, if you accept that the weapon today is essentially the same design as it was back then, it can certainly compete for historical pedigree with the Kishock.

However, accepting that proposition would betray a fundamental ignorance about the weapon's history and how its current-day version compares to its historical ancestors. The modern Graal is very, very different from its origins in every way, including its design. Only the basic concept remains unchanged: A shotgun that fires large spikes – flechettes, technically – out of multiple barrels to deal massive damage from impact and bleed.

It is a weapon of unparalleled brutality, and while many would suggest that all you need to know to understand that brutality is the fact that it is a Krogan design, I think that's extremely unfair and fundamentally false. Historically, Krogan designs have indeed shown a preference for brutal efficiency, but the Graal technically goes against that. Specifically, while brutal, it is – or rather was – anything but efficient.

The weapon was heavy, slow to reload, ineffective against shields, harder to adjust to counter developments in armour technology than its contemporaries, difficult to maintain, and generally unreliable due to its bespoke nature. The last one is particular is important to keep in mind: The Graal, historically, was a weapon of great cultural significance, and each clan had its own unique base design which was used as a basis for bespoke weapons created for each individual warrior. Thus, very rarely were you able to use parts from one Graal to fix another, and whether you could use ammunition from one weapon in another depended on the two weapons being made for the same clan.

This was by no means effective. In fact, it sounds like a ludicrous design for any weapon of war, so the question is begged: Why has this weapon been kept around for so long?

To understand this, you need to consider why it was first invented, which involves discussing parts of Krogan history that is rarely if ever discussed outside of Tuchanka, and almost never outside of Krogan society. In researching this weapon, I personally met with and talked at length with several Shamans, the historians and loremasters of Krogan society. The story I managed to piece together from these talks is fascinating.

The Graal was not invented as a weapon of war. It was, and still remains, a hunting weapon and a tool for self-defense specifically designed to meet the rather special requirements of the Krogan home world of Tuchanka. Specifically, the Graal was used to kill Thresher Maws, beasts native to the Tuchankan wastelands which historically would actively hunt Krogan who wandered into their territories (or whose territories happened to be where the Thresher Maw had decided to establish itself). At this, it proved so exceptionally effective that some of the Shamans suggested the weapon almost single-handedly had kept the Krogan population from dropping below sustainable levels during Tuchankas nuclear winter.

This explains its cultural significance and thus its staying power, despite how overtly ineffective the weapon always was as a weapon of war. But it does not explain its current use and popularity. For that, we need to look at more recent history. Specifically, we need to look to Warlord Raik Vol of Omega, who is rumoured to have been the first to replace the old manually loaded metal spike loading mechanism with a disassembled omni-tool. This is the first example of this particular design feature in any public record.

Even since then, however, the weapon has never been officially mass produced. Not even Raik Vol himself allowed his own design to enter into mass production for his own troops. Today still, every Graal you see – barring a few largely-unsuccessful attempts at small-scale mass production – are unique to specific clans, and made to order for a single warrior.

There is still great variation in Graal designs. Krogan gunsmiths haven't even been able to decide whether to standardise around a slide-track omni-forge like the Kishock's, or to stick with the standard extrusion forges. Some variants use a long-barrel design with multiple hyper-cycled forges that forge spikes for each barrel. Others use a barrel compartmentalisation system, where only the end of the barrel has acceleration rails and the rest of their length functions as the 'clip'. Each variant has unique mechanics with advantages and disadvantages, and disagreements are great within the clans and between gunsmiths about which is superior.

It should probably be noted that the name 'Graal' is actually fairly recent. The weapons have had multiple names over the centuries they've been in use, reflecting the differences between them. It has always had a somewhat similar, very Krogan 'look' to it: Large, bulky, a giant grip, an oversized waste barrel optimised for Carnage protocol, little thought put into elegantly fitting in its necessary components. Still, as far as Krogan weapons go it is one of the more refined frames, after centuries of adjustments. For example, it lost its side-mounted ammo block-and-shaver assembly even before Vol redesigned the weapon to replace its mechanism with an omni-tool. This puts it apart from other Krogan shotguns, where despite the impracticality of the placement the Krogan see it is a good enough compromise that allows them to use more powerful accelerator rails and larger-caliber shavers without forcing the barrel too far off from the trigger or unnecessary lengthening the weapon, making it more unwieldy as a shotgun.

The design change that enabled this set a precedent for the design of other Krogan weapons, such as the fearsome Striker (the design of which is directly based on the Graal). The block-and-shaver assembly was placed in the stock, with separate feeds for the main and waste barriels, and with the recoil dampeners being moved forward in front of the trigger assembly. In order not to reduce the effectiveness of said dampeners due to the reduced space in the frame for them, the dampeners were angled to directly counteract the vertical recoil more than the horizontal. For a Krogan, this was not a problem. For anyone else, this meant that firing the weapon would shatter their shoulder at best and tear their arm off at worst.

Some may be surprised that the Graal ever had an ammo shaver at all, considering the size of its flechettes. And it is a bit of a cheat to consider it that. The ammo blocks in the old models consisted of pre-forged flechettes stacked in a near-solid block. The 'ammo shaver' was a mechanism that separated the individual flechettes from the stack This design change is still seen today, with the stock being where the omni-gel repository is located, and the forges being on the ends of the barrel feeds, though some of the recoil dampeners have also returned.

The future of the weapon is an interesting thing to speculate on. While the weapon is doubtlessly one of the most powerful shotguns out there – realistically only beaten by the Claymore – it has two major problems that hinder its popularity. First, its heterogenous design means it is a nightmare to maintain and a logistical nightmare in combat situations outside of the Blood Pack and Krogan clan warfare. Second, the weapon requires an absolutely massive and extremely heavy heatsink, making it wildly impractical for non-Krogan even before you try to fire it and it rips your arm off.

Now, this is where I do some reasoned speculation. Both of those problems could be addressed by a single change, which many have believed for decades would come about eventually: Disposable heatsinks. It has long been known that there is significant theoretical potential for performance and combat effectiveness improvements in the concept of replacing static, self-repairing reusable heatsinks with disposable heatsinks, 'thermal clips' if you will. It is known that gunsmiths and arms manufacturers around the galaxy have worked on different implementations of this concept for a long time, but no consumer-viable option has ever been marketed. If this were to happen, however, the change would bring a lot of changes to weapons everywhere, in part because it would cause the complete collapse of the current intellectual property regime around arms designs centred on the Council Standard model as the redesigns would circumvent the existing patents.

More interestingly for the Graal, though, is that it would enable exactly the kinds of changes to its internals that would make it broadly viable. Based on conservative models of thermal clip efficiency compared to that of the static heatsink, we would be able to reduce the weight of the weapon by about 80% just from reducing the size and complexity of the heatsink. This would also allow a reduction in frame size to make it more manageable for non-Krogan, and it would allow more recoil dampening, all without any reduction in output force.

I really like the Graal as a weapon, and I do wish that this does happen someday. But I am in no way certain that it will.

Technical history

Since the Graal's technical history is pretty much the history of its technical development, there isn't much else to mention here, apart from a few minor interesting details.

The Vol-frame Graal – the original omni-tool based design – is still the most popular 'variant' of the weapon, with its six long barrels sitting ahead of four hypercycled forges in extrusion mode directly above the trigger mechanism. Similarly to the Kishock, the Graal has a charging mechanism that increases the force of the shot. Unlike the Kishock, this is not because of an underpowered mass effect core. The weapon has multiple accelerator rails surrounding its six barrels, that are arranged around two accelerator rods. These rods are essentially multidirectional accelerator rails on steroids.

Where the Kishock is unable to provide enough acceleration to its heavy projectiles to be particularly effective, the Graal has more than sufficient juice to do so even without charging. However, doing so only uses the regular rails. It is the rods that require charging. As a bonus, the extra time required for the charge allows the mass effect core to further reduce the mass of the flechettes, which further ramps up the muzzle velocity. A variable in the design, the charge-up time is usually between .5 and 1 seconds, with the increase in muzzle velocity equivalent to a damage increase of between 50% and 100% (depending, of course and in part, on the target profile).

A less popular but still quite widespread design uses smaller accelerator rods that are also much shorter, and more but shorter accelerator rails around the last third of the same barrel length. The rest of the barrel is effectively used as a 'clip', holding ready-made flechettes for quick firing. Predictably, the damage output from this variant is only about a third that of the Vol-frame, but in terms of damage over time it may well be significantly higher, as the weapon is capable of firing 10x6 flechettes at full charge within five seconds before overheating. At sustainable heat production, it can fire about once every two seconds at full charge until it runs out of omni-gel.

Most gunsmiths familiar with the Graal believe that if the design were to be standardised, the Vol-frame would become the basis of the weapon. Not because it is necessarily superior in combat – that is highly debatable – but simply because it has proven more reliable, and because of its historical pedigree. However, everyone agrees that for standardisation to happen, the extrusion forges have to be replaced with slide track forges, likely using the weapon's recoil to run the forge down the track similarly to ancient self-loading gun mechanisms.

Mechanics and design

Again, the Graal is a hard weapon to pin down specifications for due to its many variations, but here is a generalised summary:

The weapon is a bespoke, non-standardised frame, making maintenance and combat logistics a challenge. It fires flechettes that slice through thick armour like it was butter, giving it a huge advantage in armour-heavy Terminus combat. These flechettes are flash forged from omni-gel using an integrated disassembled omni-tool, though the integration is much less sophisticated than with the Kishock, and there is no agreed standard forge mechanism or specification.

The weapon has six barrels, significantly longer than most shotgun barrels. Some variants use much of the barrel space to store flechettes for faster firing. The barrels and firing rails are fully encased in a massive, heavy, old-fashioned heatsink that makes the weapon too heavy to use for anyone who isn't Krogan. In order to keep the recoil controllable – which with this weapon would be a problem even for the Krogan – the weapons use a relatively sophisticated recoil dampening system with angled inertial absorbers. This system is one of very few mechanisms that are generally standardised across all Graal weapons.

Its fire control VI system is primitive at best, with no option for wireless access. This is less of an intended design feature and more of a consequence of the haphazard integration of the omni-tool in the Graal's design. Since so little about the weapon is standardised, you can't easily take the Kishock route of making the right omni-tool software available on the Extranet to make it 'plug and play'. Every omni-tool you install has to be customised for the individual weapon, which means Krogan gunsmiths have made an effort to reduce the complexity of that customisation. Which means cutting away every possible 'advanced' feature, leaving a bare-bones solution that is as simple as possible to customise and maintain.

There are too many variations in the mechanics and design to fully cover them. Every Graal you come across will require its own investigation and spec sheet, unless the weapon is somehow standardised at some point in the future. And make no mistake, you will be required to work with this weapon if you ever work as a gunsmith in the Terminus or Traverse. While the gun is outlawed in Council space, it is quite common in those regions, and while it is exclusively Krogan-made and -used, the Krogan are not hesitant to hand them over to qualified gunsmiths of other races to fix, customise, or simply maintain them.

Specifications

Fire type: Charged, semi-automatic

Fire rate capacity: 0.5-2 shots/sec charged, 1-4 shots/sec uncharged (variant dependant)

The weapon can be fired as quickly as the flash forges allow, which can be as quick as twice per second or as slow as once per second. Heat-sustainable firing is much slower. The Graal usually employs a two-stage trigger mechanism, rather than a trigger-release system like the Kishock.

As an aside, it is also interesting to note that the base designs of the Graal do not have secondary barrels. Neither does, as you might notice, the Kishock. The reason is obvious enough: Projectile forging does not generate waste material in the same way that ammo shavers do. Thus, a waste barrel is unnecessary. However, some add one or two 'secondary' barrel(s) to the Graal in order to make the weapon compatible with Carnage shots. This isn't technically necessary, as you could generate Carnage rounds in the normal barrels easily enough, but doing so risks screwing up the flash forge alignment with the barrels. Those who go the secondary barrel route tend to use the microfabricator of the integrated omni-tool to fabricate the rounds.

WDAH rating: 10 – 9 – 7 – 5

While the Graal and the Claymore are not of equal weight, they are both much, much heavier than any other shotgun on the market, so much so that using the heaviest of the two (the Claymore) as a reference would make little sense as none of the other shotguns besides the Graal would rate higher than 4. Therefore, the two are rated as 10 by default, with the Graal as the reference. Behind it comes the Crusader, rated 8.

The damage rating of 9 is its charged damage, though many see it as misleading. While the M-300 Claymore is indeed more powerful, armour effectively mitigates its damage output even when armour-piercing modifications are used. The Graal, on the other hand, effectively ignores armour, and given that both weapons are most commonly used in the Terminus – where heavy armour is standard gear – most consider the Graal to effectively have a higher damage output than the Claymore. It is a debatable point worth mentioning, but the Vol-frame Graal is still officially rated at around 9D on WDAH.

Among shotguns, the Graal is one of the more accurate guns out there. Its flechettes fly straight, and the long barrels of the Vol-frame combined with the aerodynamics of the flechettes means they maintain accurate trajectories over significant distances compared to most other shotguns. The high reference here is, of course, the Crusader, which of course is banned from use in Council space even by the Alliance's N7.

Finally, its middle-of-the-road heat rating of 5 indicates that its heat sink is capable of effectively handling the heat production of the weapon such that continuous fire is possible, but limited.

Summary

To my mind, few weapons represent so much wasted potential as the Graal 'Spike Thrower'. That it is only usable by the Krogan is one thing; we would need significant developments in heat management technology to do anything about that. But it is a weapon that has the potential to be thoroughly impressive, a powerful force on the battlefield, a weapon that shift the balance of warfare, and it wastes this potential. It wastes it by evading standardisation, through clan-based traditions taking precedence to good arms design and engineering. Its major weakness is that it is a logistical nightmare, which means that even mercenaries who love it usually end up using other weapons in longer engagements because they can't maintain it effectively outside of their clan.

Should its major challenges ever be overcome, it could become a very competitive weapon indeed.

...

Author's notes: I do not own Mass Effect.

So, if it wasn't clear before, my approach to the narrative elements of things is to be canon compliant, but not canon restricted. That is, I'll expand on canon, and change things around, but I won't violate the fundamentals beyond what my changes allow naturally. In this case, that means coming up with some kind of interesting history behind the Graal that isn't contradicted by canon.

And remember, this is written in-character, before the introduction of thermal clips (before the events of Mass Effect 1, actually). This is not the Graal you know from the game. I also fear it's a bit of a mess... my mind is slightly shattered at the moment, doing a ton of writing (and not the fun kind) for work these days.

Let me know what you think! And just to note, if you spot any potential errors, let me know so I can address them. I want this sidefic to be a reference, and as such I want it to be as accurate as I can make it.